2006

Redesigning Design Education

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

Note: A full reviewed paper was not submitted after the conference.

The last 15-20 years has seen an explosion in design awareness worldwide, with a concomitant restructuring of design education curricula. Increasingly, national innovation strategies are beginning to integrate design, art, social sciences and the humanities into their programmes, and there is a corresponding developing integration of the creative and social disciplines in the curricula of science and technology.

Other Wise: Towards a Meeting of Graphic Design and Indigenous Knowledge

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Discipline:

Graphic Design & Visual Art

This paper will discuss selected issues of transformation and Graphic Design education at the Department of Graphic Design, Durban University of Technology (DUT), and draw preliminary conclusions from recent research. It will begin by discussing the context in which both transformation and Graphic Design education take place at this institution, particularly with regard to the pressures of Globalisation.

It will then discuss certain problems of the relationship between Graphic Design and Indigenous Knowledge, and suggest some methodologies derived from recent projects in our department, as possible ways forward. The Indigenous Knowledge of the amaZulu people is the source consulted in this case.

The role of assessment in the design process

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

Assessment in education is often seen as only the grading or final evaluation of a completed task performed by the student. Assessment and feedback opportunities can easily be overlooked as design and process are inseparable. How can it be monitored other than with assessment? This paper aims to outline the importance of integration between assessment and the design process, as assessment has various possibilities and varieties, just as the design process consists of a complex sequence of investigations.

The Importance of Cultural Exposure for Designers

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

As South Africans, we have often taken a somewhat perverse pride in how complex our society is. It is with a macabre delight that we talk about our population of approximately 43 million people being made up of about 8 different cultural groups speaking 11 official languages and practicing many different religions. We have 1st and 3rd world infrastructures, incredibly diverse literacy levels and ethnic affiliations and we are in the process of re-inventing ourselves as a nation and a new democracy. How complex, how colourful, how diverse we pride ourselves in being.

Shifting pedagogies: the impact of recurriculation

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

On Monday, June 5 2006, on the front page of the Business Report, it was stated that, “Schools fail to teach the basics, MPs hear”. The article proclaimed that young people were leaving school without having reading or numeracy skills, and because of that businesses were often unable to train young recruits. Each year, fewer than half of the million children who started at grade 1 will register for grade 12. Even those who leave after grade 12 do not have the basic skills to seek work (Hamlyn, 2006: 1).

Reviewing Design Education: A merger imperative

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

This paper deals, with the need for transformation of the design profession and industry as a consequence of a governmental initiative. The demographics, with respect to the design industry do not reflect the wider South African society. These challenges also face the Universities of Technology in respect of student demographics and profile.

Redesigning education for inclusiveness

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

By responding to issues such as Accessibility, Disability, Inclusive Education, and Universal Design, Design Education is uniquely placed to positively impact upon the greater community. This paper discusses the emerging subject of Universal Design and its potential contribution towards greater inclusiveness in education (and by extension professional practice) in particular, and in society in general. Though Universal Design is relevant to disciplines such as Urban & Regional Planning, Architecture, Interior Design, and Graphics/Information Design, the focus will be on its applications in the context of Industrial/Product Design.

Positioning the Bachelor of Technology: Interior Design within the HEQF

Discipline:

Interior & Furniture Design

This paper explores the impact of the draft Higher Education Qualification Framework (2004) on the current offering of the Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech). The draft HEQF does not include the qualification structure offered by previous technikon-type institutions. Articulation from Diploma into a fourth year (B. Tech) and thereafter postgraduate studies is not evident in the articulation possibilities of the draft HEQF.

In this paper, focus is placed on the offering of the programme: B.Tech Interior Design as offered by the Department of Interior Design, who forms part of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg.

OBE: The only way forward for design education?

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

This paper will look at the conceptual understandings of design education in South Africa with reference to the Fenwick monogram (2001). Learning, according to Fenwick, is categorised into five perspectives: constructivist, critical cultural, psychoanalytic, situative, and enactivist.

No more Utopias: Modeling Incremental Change in Design Practice and Pedagogy

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

Design seminars and symposia attempting to address the world’s manifold problems are suddenly commonplace. Although it is becoming clear that the UN Millennium Development goals are unattained and currently unachievable for some parts of the world, especially Africa, these same goals loom large on the agendas of the ERA, ICOGRADA, ICSID, the AIGA, the Aspen Summit, and other design conferences in the industrialized west.

Learners as Agents: design as a learning vehicle

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

This paper proposes design as the guiding pedagogical metaphor for education in the 21st century. Educational reform literature is preoccupied with notions of indeterminacy in relationto learning because of major social changes that have occurred over the last two decades. Globalization, pluriculturalism, informalisation, consumerism, the rise of the network or information/knowledge based society have increasingly become defining markers of these changes.

Designosaurus HESA: Laying bare the bones of a dilemma

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Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

I believe we are living in a time of opportunity. Democratically established and constitutionally sound, South Africans have created a platform for opportunity on an unprecedented scale. Within this framework South African designers are beginning to show their mettle.

Over the last few years we have seen some exciting work from both established and emerging designers in a variety of disciplines from fashion to product design. We have always been inventive creatures. We are continually solving problems and developing new technologies at an astounding rate. We are forward looking beings set on breaking new frontiers. We have the ability to predict many of our future needs.

A Design Studio to the Faculty of Design - Polytechnic of Milan

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Discipline:

Product & Industrial Design

In order to understand the origin and the development of the Italian designer's training, it is crucial to show the industrial and cultural context of this country, which made the 'Made in Italy' successful.

Products nature is certainly what has mainly contributed to such success, but product is only the output of an original industrial structure, as Italy was different from other countries with the same economic development: it has taken up a production system going by routes different from the big industry - economies of scale, standardization, serialization.